by Ann Beattie
“I’d finished it,” I said.
“Well, I know that, but it was generous.” She looked at me, dewy-eyed. Tom Van Sant had given her a carton of books, and I had loaned her one. She seemed lost in thought. She took a deep breath and continued: “So there we sat, having brandy, talking about what it used to be like around here and what it was like now, and then the UPS truck pulled into the driveway, and we joked that maybe it was another box of books, but it was Instant Meadow. Some woman had sent it to him; I could tell by the look on his face when he saw the gift card. Then, I don’t know—we had some more brandy, and he was playing me the most amazing record…it was the music from a movie called The Conformist. I have to see it. Anyway, we got up and started waltzing, except the kitchen is too small to waltz in, so he opened the French doors, and we started waltzing on the patio. He’d brought the can with him. And we just sort of started running—he did, pulling me by the hand, and we ended up in all this high, new grass which was absolutely stupefying, it was so soft and beautiful, and then we didn’t have anything to open the can with, so he ran back to the house and came back with a screwdriver, and he pried the top off and he threw a handful and then I tossed some. It was like tossing rice at a wedding. And then he was behind me, and he took a step forward and put his hands on my shoulders, and he had a full erection. I mean, he was busting out of his pants. It was the sexiest thing, and I didn’t expect it at all. So we did it right there, and afterwards I asked him how much land he owned, and he laughed and accused me of being materialistic, and I said that wasn’t it, that I didn’t want to be trampled by a fucking herd of cattle out there. I pulled the gift card out of his pants pocket, and he tried to get it away from me, but I saw that it said, ‘Love, Myrtis.’ ” She took a sip of coffee and puckered her lips. “Strong,” she said. “Tastes good.” She threw her head back and considered the sky for another two seconds, then leaned forward. “The two of us got so fucking sad out there—me because I hadn’t slept with anybody for so long, and there was no reason why it should have been him, and him because of Myrtis, I assume.”
“And then?”
She smiled slyly. “A sequel. Some time later. In bed.”
“So when did he give you the ring?”
“Because he’s trying to pressure me. He wants me to be indebted to him because he bared his soul to me. Not about Myrtis—about his mother.”
She’d misunderstood me. I hadn’t been asking why he gave her the ring, but when. “What about his mother?” I said.
“She died young,” Dara said. “It sounds like such a cliché: ‘died young.’ And then he started talking to me about how he didn’t think anybody really liked him. That Dowell liked him, but Dowell was an old man—old people get less discriminating, don’t they? Everybody they knew before is part of the past, and they romanticize it because it’s gone. That’s my brilliant insight for the afternoon.”
“He and Dowell are going into business, I hear.”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “Sweetie, there have been so many midnight calls.”
“His greenhouse is going to compete with the family’s business,” I said.
“It is?”
“Well, yes. It’s a greenhouse, and—”
“Can I tell you something?” she said, lowering her voice. The way the light hit her earrings was hypnotic; I had leaned forward to hear what she was about to say, but my thoughts were jingling much the way her earrings did as they swayed and caught the light. She said: “I knew what he felt like, because I don’t feel like I have any close friends either. When I left L.A., I let people slip away. But it’s really pathetic to be liked by an orphan, just because the person’s so needy, and you happened to appear.” She looked at me. By this point, I was too stunned to speak. I thought about it for a few seconds. What a strange way to think of Tom Van Sant. But leaving that aside, her observation was interesting.
“He’s not really an orphan if he grew up with his mother and father until she died,” I said.
“But you know what I mean,” she said. “After people grow up, it’s all about the way they think about themselves. He all but said he felt orphaned. His mother died of cancer, he told me, though I’ve also heard that she committed suicide. And his father gave him away afterwards because he couldn’t raise him. He said his father used to drink at night and tell him he was a ghost. ‘You’re not real,’ he’d say. ‘You’re a ghost, too.’ Like his wife was in the room, and Tom came in and joined her.”
“That’s pretty awful,” I said.
“You know,” she said, “at first I didn’t particularly have any great feeling for him. I think, looking back, I was sort of using him. Not for nefarious purposes—just because he was needy, and I was back in town and he was so welcoming. I couldn’t stand those people who were there that night—the night of Dowell’s birthday party. I just wished they’d all go away. That that silly cowgirl would ride off on her horse and that it could be Tom and you and me in the kitchen.”
I knew this wasn’t true. She had barely noticed me. She had barely noticed anyone—nor did she seem to reflect on the fact, now, that many of the people who’d been there that night were my relatives.
“What made you decide to come back to Dell?” I said. “It doesn’t seem the most likely place, after Los Angeles.”
“And it’s not the best place to try to establish myself as a major acting talent either. All I know is that I was drawn back. The land is so beautiful. Everything seems so open. I know it’s easy to confuse opportunity with uncrowded, natural beauty, but I’m no different from any other explorer. It’s just that I had a tiny peek at Dell before I arrived on its shores.”
“It really seems that beautiful to you?”
“It’s peaceful,” she said, closing her eyes. Then just when I had begun to envision Dell the way she saw it, she said: “That night we first met, Frank was playing footsie with me. Did you know that?”
If she had told me our little table was about to burst into flames, I couldn’t have been more surprised. Immediate denial set in: Frank must have brushed his foot against hers accidentally.
“It’s complicated, isn’t it?” she said.
“What is?”
“Getting involved with people. Because sometimes you’re responding to what they want, instead of what you really want, but you don’t necessarily know that right away, do you? I mean, now it’s clear why I fucked Tom in the field, but at the time I thought it was my idea.”
I was puzzled. She had told the story of the Instant Meadow with enthusiasm initially. With fondness for the two people involved. But now she seemed to think she had been manipulated. I had no idea whether she had been or not.
“I think I might be in love with him,” she said, “but some other part of me thinks that I’m just in love with the idea of being found captivating.” She pronounced “captivating” in four drawn-out syllables. “He sends me letters. We see each other all the time, and he still sends me letters. He says he can’t find the right words when we’re together. He thinks over our conversations and wants to let me know more clearly what he thinks. Sweetie, this man is entirely smitten.”
“If you love him, what’s the problem?”
“That need,” she said. “That need. What if I gave up and was always at his side—just an appendage? He wants me there all the time. He wants me to move in with him.”
“Are you going to?”
“Well, it’s not like I’m living in Versailles. I mean, I could pack my pillows and be gone.” She put her hands on both cheeks, fingers curled under. “Do you know,” she said, lowering her voice again, “that you are the only human being who has ever once been to my secret room?” She ran her hand over her face. “Poor pitiful me,” she said. “It’s so perverse. Because I want you to like me, but I’m sitting here completely self-absorbed, pitying myself for all the things I don’t have. That creepy, crummy little apartment: I hate it the way other people hate their enemies.”
“But the
bedroom is gorgeous,” I said.
“I won’t let him see it,” she said. “It’s private.”
“I wasn’t lobbying for him.”
“No,” she said quickly. “Of course you weren’t.”
I followed her line of vision when her attention drifted again. A woman was putting groceries in the trunk of her car. A little boy stood at her side. Beyond that was the drugstore. Painters were up on ladders, painting above the front door.
“What do you remember most about it?” she said. “What was the most gorgeous?”
I suddenly didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to be made to answer. I didn’t want to state the obvious, to tell her how pretty the pillows were, how much I’d liked the lace curtains.
“You were in the spider’s web,” she said when I didn’t answer. “I wove it together. Isn’t it dreamy? It was spun out slooooowly.”
“If you think of it as a spiderweb,” I said, “then isn’t the idea that people will come to you? What are they supposed to do if you don’t let them in?”
She looked at me with a faint smile. Her eyes were level. “Maybe it would be for the best if I starved,” she said.
The woman who had been putting groceries in her car picked up the little boy, who was refusing to get in the car. He kicked and cried. She continued to carry him around the front of the car, opening the door on the passenger side one-handed. His legs and arms seemed to be octopus tentacles, until she closed the door. To my surprise, he didn’t open it and jump out. The woman got into the car, started it, and drove away. As she passed us, I saw the tearstained face of the boy. His mother’s face registered nothing.
“I did want you to know,” Dara said. “Am I correct to assume that you have at least a passing interest in what happens in my life?”
“Of course,” I said. I tried to say it neutrally, but actually, I was annoyed. She had not told me much of anything, and what she said contained mixed messages. When she called me earlier, what had she wanted to talk to me about so urgently? She seemed to already have everything figured out. Also, I knew Tom less well than she did. Except for wishing his greenhouse wouldn’t materialize, I didn’t care what happened with him, one way or the other. Though it was pretty clear that I wasn’t going to be able to enlist Dara’s help in getting him to change his plans. The greenhouse’s opening had been announced in the paper. What likelihood was there that he wouldn’t do exactly what he intended? Still—something made me decide to try. Then, at least, I would feel that something had been accomplished by the meeting.
So I laid it out for her. I told her what problems Tom Van Sant would be presenting us with. I tried to say, without excessive pride, that there was some value in a family-owned business of long standing. I asked her, point-blank, to ask him to reconsider.
She pointed to my open purse, indicating she wanted more rum in her empty coffee cup. I poured some in her cup, then some in mine, looking around to make sure no one was watching. No one seemed to be, though the woman who’d just driven away returned to the parking lot and jumped out of her car, picking up something small—a toy?—from the asphalt. Again, we watched the woman and child drive away, but this time his eyes were bright, and he was smiling, clutching something to his cheek.
“What would it be like? What would I do? Marry Tom and have little babies and a nice little life?”
It wasn’t really a question.
“You’re smart not to have them,” she said. “I’d never go through that again. My parents were monsters. They insisted I have the child I was carrying when I was a teenager, and then they forced me to give her away. When my mother married her second husband, she had a baby, herself. She said it was intentional, that she’d always known a woman who performed abortions. Can you imagine saying that to me?” Dara looked at the ring on her finger. “She had to show everybody how youthful she was. How fecund.”
Dara was full of surprises. She’d had a child?
“Is it an issue with you and Bob?” she said. “Am I skating on thin ice?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not an issue.” (Meaning: we hadn’t discussed it in a while, and I realized perfectly well that motherhood would be very demanding. Still—what was I going to do? Spend my life doing errands for the family and typing manuscripts I knew would never be published?)
“It’s good it isn’t,” she said. “It’s none of my business. Though I guess you realize your family wonders what’s going on. The rest of them are such breeders.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frank said that, anyway. Maybe just he and his wife wonder what’s going on.”
“How would Frank come to tell you that?” I said.
“Frank calls me sometimes. We’re sort of phone pals. I only saw Frank a few times, and I let him know very clearly that I wasn’t interested.” The corners of her mouth turned down, in genuine distaste. “I felt condescended to—like I was being hit on just because I was single and he assumed that therefore I was available. I reminded him that I was not the one who started the footsie game.” She looked at me, and her expression lightened. “Is this something you didn’t know?”
I shrugged. “I’m surprised, but I guess I shouldn’t be.”
“You’re upset with me for telling you.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Just a slight bit.”
“I feel bad for Janey.”
“I’m sorry for her, too. Listen: I didn’t try to pick up her husband; he tried to pick me up. All I did was have a cup of coffee with him and tell him it wasn’t going to happen. He hasn’t called for a week or so now. He did say she’d had the baby.”
“She did,” I said. “It was premature. A girl named Joanna.”
“I don’t think the baby was her idea,” Dara said.
This did take me aback. I knew Janey had always wanted a girl. She had seemed happy about the pregnancy.
“He found out she was taking long walks when she was supposed to be in bed,” Dara said. “Poor thing. Let’s face it: for any of us who have been through it, I assure you, however she decided to deal with it was more her business than his.”
“Well, the baby’s beautiful,” I said. I heard the quaver in my voice. Before, I’d been denying even to myself how much I was put out with her, but the information about Janey had really stung—enough so that I went on the offensive. I heard myself say: “Has your child ever looked for you?”
“How could she?” she said slowly. “She’s just a little girl. But she was in the back of my mind when I decided to move back to New England. Not that she couldn’t find me wherever I was living, but that it might be more fitting if she found me—you know—in the general geographic area of the scene of the crime. I was sent away to Bronxville to give birth, but my parents arranged the adoption in New England.” She reached into my purse, took out the flask, and refilled her mug. She raised an eyebrow and extended the flask in my direction. I pointed to my cup. When she finished pouring this time, the rum was gone.
“To tell you the truth, I think it was one of those backdoor deals. I have no reason to believe my mother arranged for an adoption on the up and up. Straightforwardness was never her style.”
I believed her and I didn’t believe her. Somehow I believed that everything she said was true, but moving back to New England because she thought her child might find her there because that was where the papers had been signed for the adoption…it just didn’t make sense. Considering the sad story I’d just been told, though, questioning her curious logic hardly seemed important. If she was overly interested in the details of Janey’s pregnancy and what issues Janey and Frank might have disagreed about, or in how other people felt about babies generally, it was easy to understand why.
“Tell me the truth,” she said slyly. I could tell by the way she mugged, holding her head slightly sideways, looking at me with dropped lids. “That baby you said was so beautiful. Frank says she’s tiny and pink and bald. Do you think you might find her beautiful just becaus
e you’re her aunt?”
“I might,” I said.
“But then again, he might be describing the baby as a little tinier and a little pinker than she really is. Lest we forget, men are often embarrassed to say how much they love their babies.”
“That could be, too,” I said.
“I want to reassure you,” Dara said. “I don’t have any indication that Frank doesn’t love his wife.”
“Well, I don’t either,” I said. Not loving Janey—how could that be possible? Janey was terrific. She had always been my favorite person in the family. I had often taken my cues from Janey.
“But you know,” she said, “if anyone was to talk to Tom about the greenhouse, I think Frank would have a better chance than I would. He’d just think I was meddling in something that’s really not my business, but he has a lot of respect for Frank. Maybe there’s a way they could work together.”
I thought about the conversation I’d had with Frank at the beach on Barbara’s birthday. It didn’t seem likely that Frank would do it—but maybe if I told Frank that Dara had suggested it…“You talk to Frank,” I said. “He’d be more likely to do it if you said it made sense.”
“I can mention it,” she said, “but my feeling is that while he likes to cry on my shoulder, he doesn’t really have any desire to have me suggest how he might live his life.”
The sun had come out briefly, then gone behind a cloud. It was getting colder. Dara shivered and brushed her hair out of her face. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “But I appreciate your listening to me. And the rum. The people around here are such stiffs”—she shivered again—“and sweetie, I really do understand that you care about me. Nobody could know what to do about Tom when I don’t know myself. I have to figure out if this is something I actually want.” She locked her eyes on me. “You like him, don’t you? He thinks people don’t like him, but I told him he’s such a loner, he doesn’t really invite other people in. That ridiculous cowgirl…he had her there because she was between jobs and didn’t have any money or anywhere to stay. She couldn’t afford to sign a new lease on the house she’d been renting, apparently. He just took pity on her.”
